A Bad Attitude: A Novel from the Vietnam War

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What Breed of Liberal I Am

My Liberal Identity:

You are a New Left Hipster, also known as a MoveOn.org liberal, Netroots activist, or Daily Show fanatic. You believe that if we really want to defend American values, conservative hatriots must be exposed and mocked for every fanatical, puritanical, soulless, paranoid, fact-free, obstructionist ideal for which they stand.

More Quotations

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

-- Henry Kissinger

"When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist."

-- Archbishop Helder Camara

"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics."

-- Robert A. Heinlein

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

-- Voltaire

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."

-- Malcolm X

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

-- Eric Hoffer

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross."

-- Sinclair Lewis

"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith.... We need believing people."

-- Adolph Hitler

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference -- and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him."

-- President John F. Kennedy

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin."

-- Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine, 1615,during the trial of Galileo

"Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely-powerful infinitely-knowledgeable universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life."

-- Andrew Lias

"When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life."

-- Sigmund Freud

"All wonder is the effect of novelty upon ignorance."

-- Samuel Johnson

"Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither and will lose both."

-- Benjamin Franklin

"It is in no way lawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing, or of religion, as if they were so many rights that nature has given to man."

-- Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846)

"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts of tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us."

Support Free Speech

Friday, September 29, 2006

I have continually faulted the Baby Doc Maladminstration for its reckless ways in spending our money like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Manila. Now I'll have to take it all back.

Seems they are trying to save some money. And, big surprise, it's coming out of the Department of Veterans Affairs. To the tune of THREE BILLION DOLLARS in budget shortfalls. All because the VA once again "misunderestimated" the cost of care for blown-up and shot-up soldiers shipped back from the sandbox.

This is yet another example of the hatred and contempt this maladminstration feels for our veterans, and it is beyond me -- really beyond my powers of imagination -- to understand the support that the motherfuckers are still receiving from active duty military and veterans.

It's insulting, actually, and humiliating to be a fellow veteran with these morons. It's not fair, but we all tend to get tarred with the same brush, and the blind pig supporters of Baby Doc have the same blood of the innocent on their hands as all the corrupt and evil BFEE fascististas.

Congressmen Mark Foley (R-Child Molester) resigned from Congress after the contents of several emails that he sent to a sixteen-year-old male congressional page became public.

And the Repugs are widely known as the party of family values and quashing queers. Why I have no idea. This is a common theme among the Repugs, and for the life of me I can't understand how they KEEP getting away with it.

Oh, and BTW: It's even better because Foley was one of the sponsors of the Internet Pornograph bill...

From our Never Rains But What It Pours Department, we learn that George "Macaca" Allen's bid for the Senate from Virginia is now on life supports and not expected to last the night.

Ever since the now-infamous "macaca" comment, compounded with Allen trying awkwardly to hide his Jewish heritage, the progressive voters in Virginia have declared him anathema.

Now, from the right, an apparently neo-confederate group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans is disowning him, because of his scurrilous comments on the Confederate Battle Flag: Allen expressed "regret for displaying the flag ... he hasn't always realized some view it as a symbol of intolerance".

Jesus, you have to wonder where Allen and the rest of these people were for the last 50 years.

So for Allen, it's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. Apologize for being a racist, apologize for NOT being a racist, apologize for having a pork-shop-waving ham-sandwich-eating Jewish mother...

Hard to believe that just a few months ago this bozo was on the short list of potential Rethug presidential candidates.

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1844Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1291Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1254Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 228Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 73.

It is still864 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

More famously known as the Japanese-American "traitor" Tokyo Rose (who, BTW, never existed, under any pseudonym -- Toguri actually broadcast under the name Orphan Ann), Toguri was arrested after WWII, convicted of treason and sentenced to a long prison term.

With the active agitation of the American Legion. Naturally.

Back in those days we were afflicted, as we are now, with a you're-either-with-us-or-against-us mentality, and it wasn't until the Ford Administration of the 1970s that Iva was pardoned by the US government.

That pardon, BTW, was the direct result of "activist journalism" of the kind that we never see any more. Too bad. When I finally get arrested for treason (among other charges), it's sad to think that there just won't be any activist journalists out there who will give a shit about the truth.

I am a big opera fan -- my wife and I have had season tickets to the Seattle Opera for several years -- so it's with more than a little interest that I note the cancellation of Mozart's Idomeneo in Berlin ... before asingle performance!

Not because there were protests, riots, complaints, or even strongly-worded letters to the editor -- there weren't. It was because the opera showed King Idomeneo on stage parading around the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad and the sea god Poseidon.

The potential for upset among Muslims was cited as a reason for the cancellation. No mention was made of the ardent fundamentalist Poseidonists in the audience...

Okay, I'm of two minds about this: I believe that art for art's sake is a valuable concept, and that great art challenges the viewer. On the other hand, given the deplorable state of fundamentalist religious fervor in the world at large, to continue with the show as staged would just be asking for it. At the least I would expect an angry mob of Poseidonistas to storm the theatre -- maybe even plant a bomb or two to go off during a performance.

In Germany. In this country, it would of course be the Xian fundos making all the racket, storming the theatre, etc.

Interestingly, this particular bit of stagecraft was not even in the opera as originally envisioned by Mozart. It's a very recent addition. So maybe the answer would have been to continue the opera, but without this particular bit of business which is guaranteed to offend religious (in)sensibilities.

I really don't have an answer, except to say that it was overkill to cancel the entire opera over this. This is the kind of self-censorship that entirely too many people are engaging in these days, and we can't let ourselves fall into the trap of being afraid to offend someone. The right of free speech includes the right to say shit that is offensive.

The corollary is that people have a right to be offended, but they do not have the right to riot and blow up an opera house over it.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

In a predictable huff, Condi Rice claimed in the wake of the Chris Wallace/Faux News spanking administered by the Big Dog that the Clinton Administration had not left the incoming Baby Doc Maladministration any kind of a plan to deal with Al Qaeda.

Wrong. Once again, wrong. Raw Story has the juice on this, yet another in a never-ending series of lies coming out the yapping maws of the minions of the BFEE.

Check it out. Not satisfied with just a retelling, they've reproduced photocopies of the actual memo. Read it and see for yourself who's telling the truth and who's lying.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

It seems to me that stepping on the flag is something that used to be called "flag desecration" and I am certain will be prohibited in the proposed constitutionally amendment being touted by the right wing.

. . .

So what are we to make of this photo, wherein it is revealed that the feet trampling that flag belong to Fearless Leader and Pickles?

I got these photos over at the Unknown News site, where they have a Reuters photo essay on Baby Doc's visit to a NYPD firehouse to commemorate 9-11.

I guess nothing says "honor the memory of 9-11" like trampling on the American flag.

Olberman is the natural heir to the great Edward R. Murrow, and he seems to be almost alone in his committment to true journalism and the concept of the Fourth Estate. More power to him. Let's hope his example will help the weak-kneed sob-sisters in the media to develop some balls and start doing the jobs they are supposed to be doing.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Bill Clinton bitch-slapped Chris Wallace nearly to tears yesterday on Fox News, and it was great political theater. For those who missed it, you can see the replay over at YouTube.

This is the kind of thing I want to see a lot more of in Democrats: some good old fashioned kick-ass take-no-prisoners bad-attitude assaults on the lying liars in the wingnut media. Leave it to the best president in the last 40+ years to come out swinging and show the lily-livered pantspissers in the Democratic party how it's done.

Now I'm hoping that they'll learn their lesson and show some fucking backbone for a change. Time to stand up to the assholes at Faux News and the rest of the media. Take back our country!!!

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Just so you all know that I'm still alive. It's a lot more painful than I expected it to be, even now, two weeks post-surgery, and it really took a lot out of me. I'm back at work full time now, and at the end of the day I'm totally exhausted.

Let me heal up a little more, and I'll try to get back into it starting next Monday.

Thanks again for all of your notes of concern and congratulations. They meant a lot to me.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

One week ago tomorrow I had the end of my thumb amputated from the knuckle down, in an attempt to rid myself of a melanoma that was starting to get a strong grip on me.

The results of the biopsy of the thumb and the lymph glands in my left armpit are in: No metastasis!

I'm now as cancer-free as I was four and a half years ago, before I first noticed the telltale symptoms.

Of course, I am still in pain and find it difficult to type. But let the rejoicing go on without me for another week or so, and I ought to be back as good as new. Well, almost -- I am missing half a thumb. The best movie review I'll be able to give is "one and half thumbs up".

Thanks again to all of you who expressed your concern and sent the "healing thoughts" my way. I'll see you back here in a week or so.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

I managed to get my surgery moved up by one week, so tomorrow bright and early I report in for my thumbectomy.

I'm assuming that they are going to give me some first class drugs to take, so I probably won't be blogging -- or doing much of anything other than watching the old movies that I recorded off the Turner Classics channel and drooling on my bib -- for the next week or so.

Thanks again for all of your kind words and healing thoughts. I'm sure everything will turn out fine.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1816Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1263Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1225Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 200Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 45.

It is still892 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.